SPAM: food + war + memory in a can

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

No other tinned meat has had the worldwide cultural impact of SPAM. Though often denigrated in this country, it is celebrated across the world particularly in the Asia-Pacific where it became integrated into food cultures after The Second World War.

Jaega Wise explores this love of SPAM with Hawaiian chef Sheldon Simeon. She also meets Becky (Hanguk Hapa) in New Malden to talk about Budae Jjigae (army base stew), a dish born out of necessity, it is now a national comfort food.

SPAM also saw big increases in sales in the pandemic. As well as being a shelf stable and practical food, did our war nostalgia play a part in our renewed interest? Jaega talks to historian Dr Kelly Spring about how SPAM, gifted to Britain during the Second World War by the American’s, was initially received.

She also talks to Dr Duane Mellor from Aston University about the science and nutrition of tinned meat.

Archive of Stan Suffling and Walter Price is from the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive.

Presenter: Jaega Wise Produced in Bristol by Sam Grist

Transcript

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0:43.0	Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure.
0:48.0	We hope you enjoy it.
0:50.0	We've diversified our spam menu. We're now serving a sort of a spam de Jean that's really first rate.
0:59.0	We have Cajun spam. We're working on a recipe for Spam Laurent, which is just fabulous. I get phone calls from
1:07.4	all over the country. There's an underground spam network. I mean people have their
1:11.4	favorite spam recipes. We got one for spam soup only a few
1:15.2	nights ago from Omaha, Nebraska, and we're in the process of putting that through our research
1:21.0	and development test kitchen to see how it works and we could be serving it by next week.
1:25.6	The Fly-By Night Club in Anchorage has brought spam out of the closet in Alaska.
1:33.0	Spam now has celebrity status.
1:36.0	Not only is there gourmet spam on the menu there,
1:39.0	but there are spam t-shirts, spam memorabilia,
	...

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